Andrew Bragg (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make some remarks about this matter of public importance. As a member of the New South Wales division of the Liberal Party, I can assure the Senate that the New South Wales division would regard the Prime Minister as a favourite son. I recall that back in 2019, which seems like a long time ago now, there were two elections—one state election and one federal election—in which the Premier and the Prime Minister campaigned on a regular basis across Sydney and the state of New South Wales. That is the position that we have seen throughout this pandemic. There has been a high level of coordination between the state government and the national government here in Canberra. That is what I think people have come to expect from this government. It has been a government that has accepted that, in a national pandemic and an economic shock, there is a need for the federal government to work closely with the state governments because, under our constitutional system, power and responsibilities are shared across the federation.

Many people have complained about the former Council of Australian Governments, which was put to death by the Morrison government for good reason. I think it was described regularly as a place where good ideas went to die, and that was the case. The establishment of the national cabinet, which is an innovation designed to bring together the health and economic responses that Australia requires as a federation to get through this pandemic, has been very successful. You can look at the data points and you can look at what has happened across the globe. I think what really matters to people is: how many people have died, how many infections have there been and what has the economic response been like in terms of the rebound after you've had lockdowns and public health measures in place? On deaths we effectively still have the lowest rate among comparable countries; we still have a very low rate of infection; and we have the strongest economic rebound of all OECD nations so far. That has been the net position so far for Australia, some 18 months into this pandemic, with the national cabinet at the centre of our response.

In 2020, New South Wales had a particularly good year relative to other jurisdictions and states that we would regularly compare ourselves with on the eastern seaboard. For the most part, New South Wales remained open while Victoria was closed. Now, 2021 has been a tougher year as the delta variant has taken hold in Sydney, and I think you'll find that the Premier and the Prime Minister have levelled with the Australian people. New South Wales has been the Australian state where the delta variant has seated itself on the mainland, where it is destined to stay. These two leaders have spoken the truth, as has the Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, and the reality is that no major city across the world has been able to withstand the delta variant. Delta is ultimately going to embed itself in every major city, and the sooner people get out, get vaccinated and have public health orders, rules and plans to manage delta, the better. I don't think Western Australia has a plan to manage the pandemic. I think its plan has been to close the border. That is not a plan to manage the pandemic.

The plan in New South Wales has had to change because, as a result of carrying this country for these last 18 months, New South Wales has been highly exposed to hotel quarantine. Everyone wants to assist Australians to come back to this country; that requires hotel quarantine, and 75 or 85 per cent of the hotel quarantine has been done in New South Wales. When Victoria went offline last year, they didn't do any hotel quarantine. We've heard senators complain, bemoaning the relatively high level of cases in New South Wales, but, even with a thousand cases a day, New South Wales is still doing hotel quarantine. So these are the risks you face when you're a global city trying to carry the rest of the continent through a pandemic—you will face delta, and it will come to all the other jurisdictions that have no or low levels of case numbers at the moment. That is the reality, and that is where Australia is heading.

So, having dealt relatively well with the economic and health issues, we have seen the Prime Minister work well with the state premiers, including the Premier of my state, New South Wales, on the recent outbreak. We have seen very significant fiscal support—over a billion dollars a week—going into New South Wales. Businesses are able to go onto Service NSW and access the disaster support payments for their businesses, the JobSaver payments, and these are in addition to the payments provided by the Commonwealth through the Services Australia system. The Commonwealth and the state of New South Wales are going halves in relation to these JobSaver payments, which are putting in place a floor under businesses, which we want to see open up fully in the next eight to nine weeks in New South Wales. I think that shows the high level of coordination and cooperation—that there has been an agreement that the federal government and the state government would pay for JobSaver.

But, more broadly, there's also been a high level of coordination in terms of vaccinations. There's no question that, with the outbreak in Sydney, there has been a much higher need for vaccinations, and the national government has prioritised getting vaccinations to Sydney in particular. Of the one million additional doses of Pfizer that came from Poland, more than half a million went into south-west Sydney, in order to get people protected, because, of course, just one shot of the vaccine provides a good level of protection against the virus.

More broadly, across the state, into the western districts of New South Wales—where we unfortunately do have a COVID outbreak in some Indigenous communities—the national government has deployed an AUSMAT team and additional vaccinations to support the state government in getting vaccinations into those remote Indigenous communities, which I've visited myself. It is very regrettable that there is COVID in those areas, but we are working swiftly with the state government to ensure that vaccines can go into arms as quickly as possible. When you have COVID in your community, the best thing you can do is to get a vaccination. I think it is a testament to the high level of coordination and cooperation between the federal and state governments that there has been a huge influx of vaccinations into New South Wales, where, as of today, 67 per cent of our citizens have had a first dose. In New South Wales we're leading the nation once again on vaccinations. I believe that that means that New South Wales will be the first state to get real freedom, because we will have had the honest conversation with our citizens that delta is here, it won't be able to be eradicated, and we're going to have a high level of vaccinations, and that will make us able to reopen very quickly. And that has been possible because of the coordination between these two governments.

This has been an 18-month battle with the pandemic. Last year we deployed the very successful JobKeeper scheme, which underpinned Australia's world-leading economic response. But we also had the very successful early release super scheme, which the people across the aisle, I think, have been very supportive of, because they know that giving people access to their own money in a pandemic and in an economic shock is the right thing to do.

It's very important to put one's citizens ahead of one's donors.

I know that's a troubling concept for people across the aisle. The reality is that, with Australia facing the greatest economic and health crisis since the Second World War, the super funds and the Labor Party have been more interested in saving the super funds than in saving Australia. That is a great shame and a great stain on the Labor Party. Of course, this discussion comes on a day when we have seen Labor's former Treasurer Mr Swan become the chairman of one of the major super funds. I guess the real question is: does big super own Labor or does the Labor Party own big super? That is a question for the ages but certainly a question I hope the Senate can debate one day in a future matter of public importance discussion. I think it would be quite an illuminating discussion and I look forward to it happening, perhaps in the next session.